Friday, April 22, 2011

D&D: A brief history of the core classes

Here it is! Another finished project: Representative figures of all the core classes of all the editions of D&D. Also shown below is the finished druid. I found her among Reaper's Pathfinder line. She is the Nature Warden figure (No. 60064). And yes, druids have proficiency with scimitars.



4 comments:

  1. Greyhawk GrognardApril 22, 2011 at 10:52 PM

    At the risk of being nit-picky...

    In 1st edition, there were also paladins, rangers, illusionists, and assassins. If you're going to include "druids" as a "core class", they belong as well.

    And with the publication of Unearthed Arcana, there were also cavaliers, barbarians, and acrobats. Paladins were moved to sub-classes of cavaliers. That's sometimes (derogatorily) referred to as "1.5" edition, although most players embraced it at the time, and I personally still like it.

    All that notwithstanding, those figures are awesome, and I stand in abject humbleness before your incredible painting skills. My own efforts seem like I dip them in house paint and shake them off a few times.

    I don't suppose you've got any Ogre figures lying around? (The Steve Jackson kind of Ogre; the cybernetic tank the size of a football field.)

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  2. EvilcartoonistApril 23, 2011 at 12:15 AM

    Yeah, I saw that, but I wanted REALLY basic core classes, not just all the playable classes/subclasses. And as far as I could gather from perusing my buddy's old player's handbook was that druids were subclasses of clerics; assassins were a subclass of thief; paladins and rangers a sub of fighter; and illusionist a subclass of magic-user.
    Another way to look at it would be to see assassin, illusionist etc. as similar to the different "builds" of the core classes like we see in 4th Edition. So I stuck with my own organizational convention. )And I wasn't sure how I was going to find a figure that could be differentiated as an "illusionist." :)

    There's a similar thing in 2nd edition where the core classes are divided into "groups." When I saw that, I had to decide for myself, "Is the 'group' the core class under which the others are subclassed? Or is the 'group' simply a group of the core classes?"

    But you're right about the bard. Bard is indeed a "base" class in 1st Edition. So I'll just have to reposition my figures on the display base.

    And yes, I didn't choose Unearthed Arcana or any of the other "worlds" (Greyhawk, Eberon, Forgotten Realms, etc) or even further iterations of core books (ie, 4th Ed. Player's Handbook 2 or 3) since I wanted to keep the figure count down.

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  3. LasgunpackerMay 3, 2011 at 4:12 PM

    Great painting job (of course), but your display base grouping is the real star here.

    Looking forward to seeing more fantasty figures when you are done with the 54mm Qwik stuff.

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  4. EvilcartoonistMay 3, 2011 at 4:19 PM

    Thanks, Lasgun.
    One of the things I'm thinking about doing after the Qwik project is a group of dwarves similarly based. Perhaps the dwarves from The Hobbit (as well as Bilbo)? Just thinking aloud.
    Or maybe even a couple 28mm fantasy teams for Qwik? (yep, Qwik is all melee weapons, so it can be played in a pure fantasy setting. too.)

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